An archive of news items related to child abuse or neglect, or infringement of children's rights, in a religious context.
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MEMBERS of the Agape doomsday cult were being trained in marksmanship at a specially designed gun range at their secret Adelaide Hills compound, a former follower has claimed. The former member, who asked to be known only as Trevor, said children as young as six were included in the groups of about a dozen people who visited the Kuitpo farm, where shooting practice and training regularly took place.

He also told the Sunday Mail:

CALLS for weapons were made by Agape Ministries leaders in a bid to create a defence against police who might storm the organisation's HQ and "take members captive".

FIREARMS were gathered by cult members, many of whom belonged to gun clubs.

OTHER churches were aware of Agape's weapon stockpiling, with one pastor pleading with his congregation to pray for the Agape members to "come to their senses".

Trevor spoke to the Sunday Mail yesterday as police continued to investigate the cult after officers uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition during the week in raids on 13 properties linked to the organisation.

He said he had joined the group with his wife and children a number of years ago after being told that leader Rocco Leo had a "direct contact with God".

The family attended Leo's church weekly until Trevor became uneasy after discovering Leo "proclaimed to be God", and attempted to stockpile weapons. "Rocco actually put out his feelers through the congregation to get some firearms, as much as they could get, whatever they could get," Trevor said.

He explained Leo's motives as: "If the police ever took anyone - congregation members - captive, they would attack and get them out."

He said he and his family were not involved in the gun-gathering.

He said cult members, including women and children, were taken to Agape's Kuitpo compound in groups of about 12 to be taught "how to shoot properly" at a specially designed firing range - although he could not say if the youngsters had handled the guns.

"They were doing shooting practices up at Kuitpo, they were learning how to shoot properly," Trevor said. "They used to go, maybe 10 people, 12, 13 maybe; sometimes they would even sleep there, women went there too, children too.

"I know a guy who was practising nearly shot himself in the foot, so I think they scaled down after that.

"After that, we were told by Rock (Leo) to go and start learning how to use a gun and learn how to shoot. This is when the farm became obsolete and the island (Vanuatu) came into play.

"We were told to go learn how to shoot because if the natives that are there (on Vanuatu) uprise, we were to defend ourselves; the main thing was just to wipe them out and take over the whole island - that's why the weapons were there."

Today Tonight reporter Frank Pangallo, who has been investigating the cult, said the group planned to take over the island and run it like a "paramilitary organisation".

Members arriving on Vanuatu were told they would have to rip up their passports, throw away their mobile phones and cut off contact with family and friends back home.

No options would be given to leave the island, where a "three strikes and you're out" rule would see members "stoned to death" if they transgressed the teachings of the church three times.

Another church insider, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday Mail Leo was backed by two men, one of whom is aged in his 50s and is known as The Enforcer.

Neither of the men can be named for legal reasons.

The insider said The Enforcer was a "nice guy" with an aggressive streak. "He was a very depressive person, his moods would change; but when he was normal, he was a likeable person," he said.

He was descibed as "more a leader than a follower" who went on to work in the security industry and seemed to want to "prove himself". Another former member, who also did not want to be named, said unless followers agreed with Leo 100 per cent, they were considered "possessed". "You ask one question, you're dead or you go to hell. That's how bad he was," he said.

Another former worshipper at the cult's Oakden headquarters has spoken about the "con" used by Leo to encourage members to part with their money.

The woman said the "con artist" referred to the Bible saying people should contribute 10 per cent of their income to the church.

"At services they'd play videos of testimonials from people who said they had experienced miracles and he would promise to perform miracles for others," she said.

The woman said Leo claimed the donated money was spent on helping others but a room had recently been fully renovated like a "palace".

"It looked like a palace, it had marble fittings, huge mirrors and huge lighting fixtures like chandeliers - I think it was used for entertaining," she said.

As well as a wife, Leo was understood to have a girlfriend - Mari Antoinette Veneziano, former manager of now defunct Pirie St coffee shop Butterflies Cafe.

Mari's brother, Joe, was also said to be a close associate of Leo.

It is understood Leo was in Fiji during the week with Ms Veneziano and her brother.

Superintendent Jim Jeffery said police knew the location of Leo and "two of his close leaders", and said they would attempt to speak to them "at an appropriate time". Four male cult members have already been charged with firearms offences.

Senator Nick Xenophon said yesterday new laws regarding cults should be introduced.

"This highlights the need for anti-cult laws, as they have in Europe, where an organisation can be declared a cult and the people under the influence of the cult can be protected," he said.

"This cult has been enjoying tax-free status; if you're registered as a religion in Australia, you don't have to pay tax, the rules around disclosure are very different, there's a lack of accountability."

AN Agape cult insider has revealed its Mt Magnificent property included a secret underground bunker to shelter members from the end of the world.

The bunker, which cult leader Rocco Leo named "The Holy Land Hideout", is said to be more than 50m long, 30m wide and contains food supplies.

Nestled in sprawling hills about 20km west of Willunga, the compound is set back from main roads and surrounded by hobby farmers, making it the perfect hiding place for the doomsday cult.

The property - which they called The Promised Land - is between an abandoned home and a slaughterhouse that employs just two men. Cult members were able to go about their business virtually unnoticed for at least the past five years.

Hobby farmers driving past the innocuous-looking gates on Blackfellows Creek Rd would not have noticed a thing: a regular farm fence keeps cows from straying on to the road, goats graze quietly in the paddocks, and a shimmering dam completes the picturesque setting. It is the sort of place you would dream of retiring to. But an aerial view tells a very different story.

It is a scene eerily reminiscent of a compound in Waco, Texas, where Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh and 75 of his followers, including 20 children, died in 1993 on a property they named Mt Carmel.

The insider said the property had no security, with members simply opening two farm gates to gain entry.

He said members would gather at the property - sometimes 20 or 30 at a time - and work on maintaining the land. "There were children there, it was no problem," he said. The man said members were "different nationalities - Australians, Italians, Greeks". Members fed the 50 goats and six or seven cows with feed kept in two sheds either side of the kitchen.

In the evenings, members were made to sleep on the floor of the dining room, inside the kitchen building, in sleeping bags and on bean bags, while the leaders and their families relaxed, "watched television and got warm" in the leaders-only house. The man said the site was powered by mains electricity. A dam at the front of the property is maintained by a gravity-fed water supply from a nearby gold mine. Prior to Leo buying the property more than five years ago, the dam water was shared between local land owners, but neighbours say the cult quickly cut off their supply.

The complex was once run as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre by the Adelaide Central Mission. One neighbour, who did not want to be named, said gunshots on the property had become more frequent in the last five to six weeks. "I know what a .22 for general farm use sounds like," the woman said. "But these were different guns."

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Religious Child Abuse

Marge Simpson: "I know God would never ask a mother to give up her child for the world...again."

Judith Herman describes the way in which perpetrators seek to control the disclosures and discourses of abuse:

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no-one listens... After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.”

About This Blog

This blog is an archive of news articles on religion related child abuse. The dates in the Blog Archive list below are the dates these articles were posted to this archive, not the original date of the article. Each post in this blog includes at the top of the entry the name of the originating publication or website, the original date of publication, the name of the reporter or author of the article if one was provided, and at the bottom of each entry a link to the original source.

About post titles: The original headlines for the articles in this archive appear after the name of the original publisher and date. Those titles often do not contain enough identifying information as they are often written for local audiences and limited by space constraints. I initially just used the original article headline as my title for the post entry. However, after about a year I realized those headlines are inadequate. I began to create my own titles for each entry, which serves two purposes. My own titles, which appear at the top of the entry in red font, contain more specific information from the article, making it easier to categorize and search for. Many of my own titles also contain an editorial slant that serves as my own brief commentary on the subject matter.

Following this blog: Although I have stopped adding articles to this archive, as I explain on the home page, I do continue to publish comments submitted to existing articles. I also use the comments section to update articles. For example, where a court case related to an archived article is ongoing, I will publish news updates in the comment section of the related article. For this reason do not subscribe to Posts but subscribe to the Comments for any new updates in this archive . I also post all updates to this blog through my TWITTER account.